The ArenaNet Blog announces plans to stress test the servers for Guild Wars 2 next Wednesday, and invites all those who have participated in previous beta events or pre-purchased the game to participate:

We were very pleased with how our servers performed during our second Beta Weekend Event, but we want to gather additional data on how they operate under load before the next one.
That’s where you come in.

All players who have pre-purchased Guild Wars 2 are invited to participate in our upcoming stress test. This four-hour test event will run on Wednesday, June 27th, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT (GMT-7).

We won’t wipe characters for this event, so if you played in our previous betas, you can pick up right where you left off. All we need you to do is log in and have fun—leave the stress to us!

Tonight, I got a phone call from the local GameStop where I had pre-ordered Guild Wars 2. The girl on the phone told me that GW2's release date, which was supposed to be 2012-06-26 was pushed back, with no replacement date published.

Veterator wrote on Jun 22, 2012, 18:50:Just like Free 2 Plays, is the model going to allow it to be fun? Or grindy as hell if you don't put in a minimum amount of money? What is that minimum amount? Tribes Ascend, prior to daily deals and ignoring bundle packs was something like 180 bucks to buy everything in the game outright via gold, if not more because they futzed with gold prices. So you have to do some personal weighing based on gameplay to decide if you can put up with the system or how much it'll cost to make it bearable.

For what its worth, GW2 is nothing like a F2P game. The in game cash shop sells cosmetic bonuses like top hats and sunglasses, or minor convenience items like a summonable banker. There is no extra "system" that you have to pay for.

Also, Arenanet never called Guild Wars 1 a MMO, simply because it's not a MMO. Guild Wars 2 IS a MMO.

Veterator wrote on Jun 22, 2012, 06:19:Yeah I heard good things about it. But it's been like that with other games and I ended up being disappointed with what they thought was fun. I mean it's kind of general rule that I like to try games first, especially if I am going to be paying full price. MMOs are just one of those things, even fixed price MMOs because GW had 4(?) expansions, I suspect GW2 will have a number of expansions you'll need to continue to on soon enough resulting in a good 150-200 dollar investment if you buy them as they are released.

I totally understand not buying something without trying it, but it's silly to accuse the game of costing $150-200. If you pay the $60 box price and don't like it, then it's cost you $60, nothing more. And if you do like it, you can then decide to buy expansions or not.

Mm, I thought it was relevant to point out that they are going to earn their money elsewhere, not through subscriptions but on expansions.

I mean I don't have to pay subscriptions if I buy a game at full price and decide it's not worth it. And I figured it'd be apparent that you don't need to buy expansions too. But it's something to keep in mind that if you buy the game, eventually an expansion will come out and you'll more or less have to have it if you want to play with others. Much like you'd need a subscription if you want to pick up other MMOs and play with others (often times with expansions).

It's just something I have to weigh when trying out games...do I like it enough to have to spend more on it to continue playing it now? Should I wait until the expansions have come out and the bundle prices drops the cost of playing down significantly?

Just like Free 2 Plays, is the model going to allow it to be fun? Or grindy as hell if you don't put in a minimum amount of money? What is that minimum amount? Tribes Ascend, prior to daily deals and ignoring bundle packs was something like 180 bucks to buy everything in the game outright via gold, if not more because they futzed with gold prices. So you have to do some personal weighing based on gameplay to decide if you can put up with the system or how much it'll cost to make it bearable.

I'll just point out GW1, original game was basically a ghost town by the second or third expansion. You might see ten players in a day in the cities, at least was my experience. That's not an MMO.

Titus wrote on Jun 22, 2012, 05:20:For a game that's only the price of the box, no subscriptions, I already have had the 20 hours of fun most SP games offer in two beta weekends alone.

It's much more condensed fun than most MMO's, since content doesn't need to be drawn out to keep subscriptions flowing. I'd say it is on par with good SP / MP games. There's literally NO down and travel time, the action is always going, be it SP / coop questing, match PvP and open world conquest.

I've been playing for the last 2 BWEs, and while it's a decent game, it's really missing something for me. The game just feels like too much mindless zerging. For every dynamic event you do, it seems like you're running with a gang of people killing everything that moves until things die and its time for the mob to move on next event in the chain.

It's like that for the WvW too, zerging down one keep after another until your group dissipates or you run into an even bigger zerg from an opposing realm.

Anyways, it's still beta, and the game will hopefully get better with some more polish and server population settles down a bit.

NKD wrote on Jun 21, 2012, 17:13:PR spinnage. By doing their stress test only for preorders and only for a small window during off-peak hours, they avoid any of the perception that their servers aren't ready for launch.

Very America-centric of you. It's peak hours for much of Europe, and their Euro player base is probably just as big if not bigger than the US one.

There might be some PR influence, but ArenaNet's clearly been doing genuine testing of this game, not just beta-marketing.

Veterator wrote on Jun 22, 2012, 06:19:Yeah I heard good things about it. But it's been like that with other games and I ended up being disappointed with what they thought was fun. I mean it's kind of general rule that I like to try games first, especially if I am going to be paying full price. MMOs are just one of those things, even fixed price MMOs because GW had 4(?) expansions, I suspect GW2 will have a number of expansions you'll need to continue to on soon enough resulting in a good 150-200 dollar investment if you buy them as they are released.

I totally understand not buying something without trying it, but it's silly to accuse the game of costing $150-200. If you pay the $60 box price and don't like it, then it's cost you $60, nothing more. And if you do like it, you can then decide to buy expansions or not.

Veterator wrote on Jun 22, 2012, 03:30:Not into buying MMOs without getting some trialing on before hand. Most end up being very disappointing despite positive buzz prior to release.

For a game that's only the price of the box, no subscriptions, I already have had the 20 hours of fun most SP games offer in two beta weekends alone.

It's much more condensed fun than most MMO's, since content doesn't need to be drawn out to keep subscriptions flowing. I'd say it is on par with good SP / MP games. There's literally NO down and travel time, the action is always going, be it SP / coop questing, match PvP and open world conquest.

Yeah I heard good things about it. But it's been like that with other games and I ended up being disappointed with what they thought was fun. I mean it's kind of general rule that I like to try games first, especially if I am going to be paying full price. MMOs are just one of those things, even fixed price MMOs because GW had 4(?) expansions, I suspect GW2 will have a number of expansions you'll need to continue to on soon enough resulting in a good 150-200 dollar investment if you buy them as they are released.

Veterator wrote on Jun 22, 2012, 03:30:Not into buying MMOs without getting some trialing on before hand. Most end up being very disappointing despite positive buzz prior to release.

For a game that's only the price of the box, no subscriptions, I already have had the 20 hours of fun most SP games offer in two beta weekends alone.

It's much more condensed fun than most MMO's, since content doesn't need to be drawn out to keep subscriptions flowing. I'd say it is on par with good SP / MP games. There's literally NO down and travel time, the action is always going, be it SP / coop questing, match PvP and open world conquest.

These beta's make a lot of sense. Ungoing big beta's are the ones used for marketing purposes. For most testing purposes (quest scripts etc.) small focused internal or closed external beta's make a lot more sense. There's no use in having to wade through endless identical bug reports and useless discussions on beta forums just to fix these.

For client/server performance and other mechanics that are supposed to scale (including event difficulty), you do need the big beta's, but it isn't necessary to keep them going, since every day you will get another ton of known issues to sift through.

Now, they can gather data from the forums after a beta weekend, close them, iterate through reported issues in development, test internally, run a short 'stress test' to measure the changes in client and server performance, perhaps tweak some more, and then roll the changes out in the next big beta weekend.

That way you can be pretty sure the known performance/scaling issues are fixed, and can concentrate on the next bottlenecks popping up. It's too bad I can't play it more than once or twice a month, but that's not the intention of a beta. A solid released product is.

Frijoles wrote on Jun 21, 2012, 15:11:Wonder if they're turning off various bits of hardware to force everyone on to a single system where they can watch the results. That'd make more sense for stressing something, and they could watch/tweak it during a regular workday.

Exactly. They had a bunch of servers(worlds) running over the last beta. My guess is they'll be directing everyone to one server in order to try and overload it. By only having one sever up instead of dozens, they can simulate the equivalent of multiple servers getting hit on a busy weekend. The time/day they choose will allow them to have a more controlled size group. If they ran this test on a weekend with multiple servers, they'd have to watch them all closely. With only one server up, they can closely observe its logs and see exactly how it holds up and what needs to be recoded (along with making real time adjustments to see how it handles the stress).

I have a feeling there will be at least two more betas, with their accompanied "stress tests". One to introduce the last two races, and a final one to iron out any remaining kinks. If only one race is introduced in the next beta, then double that to four.

Paranoid Jack wrote on Jun 21, 2012, 13:29:I pre-purchased and am wondering why they don't allow us to beta like everyone else. Unless something has changed in the last month or so... I know for a fact they have had an ongoing beta for more than six months now since I know several people who are in and are allowed to play pretty much when they want to.

I hope they do a REAL stress test: An open beta. The open beta for Torchlight 2 convinced me to preorder it. Since I've never played GW, the opportunity to try it out might convince me to shell out for it.

On the other hand, the open beta for Diablo III convinced me NOT to buy it, so if they're going to have problems like that, maybe it's in there best interest not to...

If Star Citizen was a child conceived in a night of passion, it would have started elementary school by now. -panbient

Cutter wrote on Jun 21, 2012, 13:48:Maybe they've picked this for a reason. To get some indication of what an average weekday might be like, otherwise they'd be doing in the evening and on the weekend.

Whats the point of that? A stress test usually implies loading it down like a mofo. This time frame could eaisly be when the servers have the least load.